2. POSTGRES IS DIFFERENT FROM
(BETTER THAN)
YOUR RDBMS

3. Gurjeet Singh
gurjeet.singh.im
EDB - EnterpriseDB.com

4. FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A
Developer
Manager

5. DEVELOPER'S PERSPECTIVE
License
Reliability
Security
Features
Extensibility
Performance
Diagnosability

6. DEVELOPER : LICENSE
BSD-like License
Liberal than/Very different from GPL.
PostgreSQL License gives you
Freedom to read, patch/improve the code.
An opportunity to understand the database internals
Install, use/develop and deploy full feature-set without a
license
Upgrade hardware without paying for license cost
Unlike commercial RDBMSs where licenses come in the
way of development, QA, and hardware upgrades.

7. DEVELOPER : RELIABILITY
ACID compliant
Constraints (Primary Key, Foreign Key, CHECK)
Data-page checksums to detect corruption

8. DEVELOPER : SECURITY
Per-object GRANT/REVOKE permissions
Per-column GRANT/REVOKE permissions
SSL connections
LDAP and RADIUS authentication

9. DEVELOPER : FEATURES
Postgres is a Platform
Vast feature set
... and ever-expanding
Postgres Feature Matrix
http://www.postgresql.org/about/featurematrix/

10. DEVELOPER : FEATURES
Common Table Expressions (CTEs)
Similar to Macro in programming languages
Supports recursive evaluation (alternative to Oracle's
CONNECT BY)

11. DEVELOPER : FEATURES : DATA TYPES
Many advanced data types come builtin
Full List of Builtin Data Types
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/datatype.html

12. DEVELOPER : FEATURES : DATA TYPES
Does not have/need NVARCHAR data type
The CHAR/VARCHAR/TEXT types are capable of storing
Unicode data

13. DEVELOPER : FEATURES : DATA TYPES
Boolean (a first-class data type)
Bit (and Bit strings)
Money
Bytea (binary data)
Interval (difference between TIMESTAMPs)
Enumerated Types
Geometry Types (Point, Line Segment, Polygon, ...)
Network Address (inet, cidr, macaddr)

14. DEVELOPER : FEATURES : DATA TYPES
Range Types (tsrange, daterange, int4range, ...)
Composite types
Builtin multi-dimensional arrays
Automatically defines array type of builtin and user-defined
data types

15. DEVELOPER : FEATURES : DATA TYPES
hstore
JSON
XML

16. DEVELOPER : FEATURES
Streaming Replication
Hot Standby
Per-transaction synchronous replication
True serializable transactions
LISTEN/NOTIFY
Triggers
Exclusion constraints
Window Functions
Function overloading
Operator overloading
Full-text search
Large Objects up to 4TB
Materialized views

17. DEVELOPER : FEATURES
Create procedures in various programming languages
PL/pgsql
PL/perl
PL/tcl
PL/java
PL/v8 - JavaScript

18. DEVELOPER : FEATURE/PERFORMANCE
TOAST
The Oversized Attribute Storage Technique
Automatic out-of-line storage and automatic compression

19. DEVELOPER : PERFORMANCE
Cost-based optimizer
Index-only scans
Synchronized seq-scans
Table partitioning
Unlogged tables

20. DEVELOPER : PERFORMANCE
Partial indexes
Many types of indexes
BTree
Hash
Gin
Gist
KNN
SP-Gist

21. DEVELOPER : PERFORMANCE
Types of join-strategies
Nested-loop joins
Hash joins
Sort-Merge joins
Bitmap-index scan; Bitmap-And/Or joins (in-memory)
Can use multiple indexes of a table in the same scan
Semi joins
Anti joins

22. DEVELOPER : PERFORMANCE
Faster than NoSQL (at NoSQL use case)
See slides 32 onwards of Chrisophe Pettus'
PostgreSQL as a Schemaless Database
http://thebuild.com/presentations/pg-as-nosql-pgday-
fosdem-2013.pdf

23. DEVELOPER : DIAGNOSTICS
Per-function statistics
Performance Views
pg_stat_activity
pg_locks
pg_stat_*
pg_stat_all_tables
pg_stat_all_indexes
...

24. DEVELOPER : DIAGNOSTICS
Logging Options
log_min_duration_statement
log_temp_files
DTrace/SystemTap support
Scripts to record and diagnose performance issues

25. DEVELOPER : EXTENSIBILITY
Highly Extensible
Create Your Own
Data Types
Operators
Index Types
create extension
Check out
Foreign Data Wrapper
Foreign Tables
PGXN.org

26. DEVELOPER : EXTENSIBILITY
Examples
PostGIS
PostGIS adds support for geographic objects to the
PostgreSQL object-relational database.
PostgreSQL-HLL
A PostgreSQL extension adding HyperLogLog data
structures as a native data type

27. MANAGER'S PERSPECTIVE
Acquisition Cost (License)
Future Proof
Vendors/Providers (Companies who can help)
Maintenance Cost (Support)
Buy-in From Upper Management

28. MANAGER : ACQUISITION COST
Free

29. MANAGER : ACQUISITION COST
FREE
Save Money $$$
Higher Profit Margins
A Leg Up On The Competition

30. MANAGER : ACQUISITION COST
BSD-like License
Liberal than/Very different from GPL.
Install, use/develop and deploy full feature-set without a
license
Upgrade hardware without paying for license cost
Unlike commercial RDBMSs where licenses come in the
way of development, QA, and hardware upgrades.

31. MANAGER : FUTURE PROOF
Community-driven
No single commercial entity controls it (unlike MySQL)
Will be always free (cost and project management)

32. MANAGER : FUTURE PROOF
Ever-increasing resource-pool; developers and DBAs
Compare growth in job requirements

33. MANAGER : VENDORS/PROVIDERS
Many top-quality vendors
EDB (EnterpriseDB)
PG Experts
2nd Quadrant
OmniTI
Command Prompt
Many smaller consulting teams/individuals

34. MANAGER : MAINTENANCE COST
24/7 Support available
Very affordable support contracts
For e.g. EDB charges per-socket (unlike Oracle, that
charges per CPU)

35. MANAGER : MAINTENANCE COST
Consulting
Remote-DBA
Database Health Checks
Training
For Developers
For DBAs

36. MANAGER : UPPER MANAGEMENT BUY-IN
Show them the last few slides :)

37. THANK YOU